The deficit project

 I&I:

Wow. A government commission/initiative will cut waste. Reduce headcount. Chop a quarter of federal spending, including entire agencies. Eliminate counterproductive regulations. And increase efficiency to boot.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Hmm. Would that be President Taft’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency? Most recommendations were ignored, except the 1921 introduction of the federal budget process putting the executive in charge of driving budgets. That worked great a decade or so later when FDR generated a more-than-doubling of federal spending by 1940.

Oh, wait. You mean the (Herbert) Hoover Commission? Two of them, really, reporting in 1949 and 1955, respectively. They were so effective that outlays jumped 152% between the first report and 1961.

Richard Nixon’s proposal to squish all of government outside State, Treasury, Defense, and Justice into four “super departments”? That reorg effort ended by creating four additional entities, including – horrors! – the super-regulators at EPA.

Surely Tricky Dick did better with the other trick up his sleeve: historically aggressive use of impoundment. Uh, no. That ploy prompted Democratic Watergate tormentors to force him to sign a 1974 budget process “reform” under which the U.S. has avoided a deficit exactly four times. The last time all the appropriations bills it envisioned passed on time? Try 1997.

Jimmy Carter’s “zero-based budgeting?” So complex that most agencies actually started with a baseline of about 70% of spending, the initiative was abandoned by that notorious big spender: Ronald Reagan.

OK, give Dutch his props: he axed non-defense spending in real terms by 9.7% in term 1 and kept it flat thereafter. Yet, elimination targets like the Departments of Energy and (yes) Education? Still standing when he left office.

His Grace Commission? An entirely private sector-run initiative tasked with finding “(o)pportunities for increased efficiency and reduced costs”? One more informally charged by The Gipper to – wait for it – “drain the swamp”? The result, per Reagan’s own presidential library: “Most of the [2500] recommendations, especially those requiring legislation from Congress, were never implemented.”

The Great Communicator’s 1981 Social Security benefit-trimming, tax-cutting reform plan? The newly GOP-controlled Senate rushed through a resolution condemning his proposal 96-0. Instead, the Greenspan Commission accelerated tax hikes and installed new levies on benefits plus phased-in increases in the retirement age.

Not long after came Gramm-Rudman, designed to balance the budget via automatic cuts if targets weren’t hit. Original version declared unconstitutional. Never balanced the budget.

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There is more.

Hopefully, the Elon and Vivek team will forge something that will finally work to control spending.  There should be something freeing in reducing debt.  That is certainly my experience.  Getting out of debt makes life easier and allows expenditures on things that are currently postponed because of debt payments.